{"id":40385,"date":"2026-02-15T06:04:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=40385"},"modified":"2026-02-15T06:04:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:04:33","slug":"india-plans-ai-data-city-on-staggering-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=40385","title":{"rendered":"India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale"},"content":{"rendered":"
As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.<\/p>\n

“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.<\/p>\n

“And as a nation… we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he told AFP ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.<\/p>\n

Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.<\/p>\n

And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data centre in the same city.<\/p>\n

Visakhapatnam \u2014 home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” \u2014 is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than for cutting-edge technology.<\/p>\n

But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.<\/p>\n

“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem… with a 100-kilometre (60-mile) radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometres wide.<\/p>\n

Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 per cent of all foreign direct investments” in India in 2025.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just about the data centres,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre (three per hectare) for major investors.<\/p>\n

“I’m chasing the companies that make those servers that go sit in those data centres, the companies that make the entire air conditioning, the water-cooling system — the whole nine yards.”<\/p>\n

The 43-year-old, Stanford-educated minister is the son of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who helped turn Hyderabad into a major technology hub that is dubbed “Cyberabad”.<\/p>\n

They are allies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will host the AI Impact Summit from Monday.<\/p>\n

India is now third in a global AI power ranking — sitting above South Korea and Japan — based on more than 40 indicators from patents to private funding calculated by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred AI.<\/p>\n

With more than a billion internet users, India has seen a surge of investment as generative AI players seek inroads to the world’s most populous country.<\/p>\n

Microsoft said in December it will invest $17.5 billion to help build the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, with CEO Satya Nadella calling it the firm’s “largest investment ever in Asia”.<\/p>\n

But critics say India lags in access to high-end computing power or commercial AI deployment, and remains more a consumer than creator of the cutting-edge technology.<\/p>\n

Some question whether data centers will create meaningful employment when up and running, but Lokesh rejects that.<\/p>\n

“Every industrial revolution has always created more jobs than it has displaced,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But it has created those jobs in countries that have embraced the industrial revolution.”<\/p>\n

Lokesh argues that the jobs and economic benefits would more than compensate for the giveaway cost of land.<\/p>\n

He said the state government had accounted for the vast electricity and water demands for the energy-hungry industry, and would tap “surplus water” that drains into the Bay of Bengal to cool the massive data centres.<\/p>\n

“It’s a crime that so much water during monsoons goes into our oceans,” he said.<\/p>\n

He cited China as an inspiration — admiring how India’s rival had “been able to systematically bring people out of poverty” at speed.<\/p>\n

The state’s plan to create industrial clusters was something he had “learned from China”.<\/p>\n

With a target of six gigawatts of data centre capacity — three already signed and another three in the pipeline — Andhra Pradesh is betting that speed and scale will give it an edge.<\/p>\n

New Delhi last year agreed to “in-principle approval” for six 1.2 GW nuclear power plants at Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh.<\/p>\n

“We are on a journey,” Lokesh said. “We will execute these projects at a pace that the country has never seen”.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says. “The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}